Science and technology

The Fundamental Physics Prize

In with a bang

THIS year's biggest physics news must have given the Nobel Committee a headache. When on July 4th Joe Incandela and Fabiola Gianotti, heads of two big experiments at CERN, Europe's main particle-physics laboratory, announced that they had finally nabbed what looks like the Higgs boson, many believed that the researchers behind the discovery had the 2012 prize in the bag. In the event, the secretive committee held their horses and recognised Serge Haroche and David Wineland for manipulating fragile quantum states instead. One reason might have been that it remains unclear whether the new particle discovered at CERN is precisely the sort of mass-giving beast its eponymous predictor, Peter Higgs, and five other less-well-known theorists came up with 48 years ago. Another could be that, since a Nobel prize can be shared by no more than three people, more time was needed to work out which three were the most deserving.

Neither of these considerations encumbered the committee of Nobel's upstart rival, the Fundamental Physics Prize. On December 11th it revealed that Dr Incandela and Dr Gianotti will share a generous $3m special award with Peter Jenni, Michael Della Negra, Tejinder Singh Virdee, Guido Tonelli and Lyn Evans, who all spearheaded CERN's Higgs hunt since the project was approved in 1994.

A second $3m special prize goes to another perennial Nobel candidate, Stephen Hawking, for, among other things, his prediction that despite black holes' ability to gobble up everything that comes close enough, including light, the laws of quantum mechanics imply that they must also emit energy. This hypothesis, too, is being tested at CERN, though the microscopic black holes that might bear it out have yet to be observed in its mammoth particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.

Lack of clear experimental evidence means Dr Hawking may have to wait a little longer for a call from Stockholm. By contrast, the Fundamental Physics Prize, founded earlier this year by Yuri Milner, a Russian internet entrepreneur (pictured), eschews its venerable Swedish counterpart's conservatism by seeking to reward inspring, envelope-pushing research, without necessarily waiting to ensure that it holds up to the letter. And, as the CERN seven have found out, it can be divvied up between any number of people.

The laureates now join the ranks of the selection committee, composed of past recipients. (To kick-start things, in July Mr Milner shelled out a whopping $27m to nine handpicked "brilliant minds", but then recused himself from any future deliberations.) Besides recognising Dr Hawking and the Higgs hunters with the special awards, conceived as an occasional affair reserved for especially salient accomplishments, the committee announced the winners of three Physics Frontiers Prizes. These were chosen from among more than 100 nominations crowdsourced through the prize's website.

Alexander Polyakov of Princeton and Joseph Polchinski from the University of California, Santa Barbara, will each receive $300,000 for contributions to different aspects of string theory, a class of mathematical models based on quantum theory that seeks to describe reality at its most fundamental. Another $300,000 will be shared by Charles Kane from the University of Pennsylvania, Laurens Molenkamp from the University of Würzburg and Shoucheng Zhang of Stanford, for the theory and discovery of topological insulators, materials which do not conduct electricity on the inside but which, by dint of quantum-mechanical quirks, do so on their surface. (Three scientists under the age of 35 also received $100,000 each for work in other areas of physics.)

Dr Polyakov, Dr Polchinski and the topological trio automatically become the nominees for the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize. The winner (or winners) will see the Frontiers prize topped up to the full $3m Mr Milner has promised to dish out each year for the main award. This will be presented at an Oscar-like ceremony at CERN near Geneva on March 20th, together with the other prizes announced today.

It will all no doubt be a far cry from the white tie and tails required of Dr Wineland, Dr Haroche and the other 2012 Nobel laureates as they accepted their medals and diplomas from King Carl XIV Gustav in Stockholm on December 10th. But Mr Milner's largesse, nearly three times as generous as the Nobel Foundation's $1.1m (down from $1.3m in previous years due to the economic crisis), his selection committee's cunning choice of talked-about laureates, and the propitious timing of its announcement, a day after the Nobel gala, guarantee that, appropriately, the Fundamental Physics Prize bursts onto the scene with a very big bang indeed.

The Hawking Effect is not established.
Aside from the fact that it is far too small to measure, and may never be verified experimentally, the claims about black hole thermodynamics are problematic and have been from the very outset for 38 years. The continuing debates and controversies in the physics literature over all this time have shown that far from being logical or necessary, Hawking's speculations are on shaky grounds and could quite possibly be dead wrong.
A rich man can give his money to anyone he chooses. That doesn't make the recipient's work correct in Nature's final verdict.

I don`t know how Mr Milner made his fortune, being a Russian oligarch, as it seems, but he is putting it to good use. I have admired Professor Hawking`s life and work and I am extremely thankful to Mr Milner that he honored him with a special prize. For me Professor Hawking is the outstanding scientist of our time like Albert Einstein was in the twentieth century. Unfortunately he could not be awarded with the Noble prize yet. By the way: Alfred Nobel made his fortune by producing explosive stuff. I guess Mr Milner is not in such a bloody business.

Hawking's work is interesting and demonstrates that the value in a theory is not simply to make a new prediction. Hawking radiation, and other aspects of black hole thermodynamics, follow logically from two already well-vetted physical theories, namely quantum field theory and general relativity. If Hawking radiation does exist, the work is a triumph of rational thought. If it doesn't exist, then shortcomings have been identified in two pillars of modern physics. It's a win-win situation for the advancement of our physical understanding.

In reply to myself, I should point out an error in my comment. I said: "We must not forget that the four papers comprising Special Relativity were published in 1905 ... ." This is not, in fact, correct. Only one of the four papers develops Special Relativity. And one of the four papers Einstein published in 1905 is on the photoelectric effect, for which he later won the Nobel Prize. I apologize for the error. It doesn't mean that I am stupid. I am not a stupid Arab.

Hi,
In with a Bang (and a whistle). Well done, please take anything from the bottom shelf. This prize is preempt and with the peace prize show business. Stand up the man who said “We have found the Higgs”. In there world there is something is wrong, why in the standard model do we have so many forces and not one and why are just two fundamental partials? What happened to supersymmetry, it nearly got a prize. The repetitive nature of the 12 elementary partials have patterns and why 12?

Since "committee" can take the plural form, "committees", it would sound awkward to use both forms only with the plural of a verb - e.g. "The committee are...." vs "The committees are...."
"Police" on the other hand, does not have a plural (aside "policemen" or "cops"), but it is used both as a 'countable and uncountable' noun.

I don't know. It sounds right to say that the committee really outdid themselves this year. Perhaps there is an implied "members" lurking in the phrase. The committee is ready to proceed also sounds correct. The committee is made up of... sounds right. OK, I think that is it. If the committee members has been contracted to the committee then the plural is appropriate. We need to send this to a committee of linguists and gramatologists and see what they say.

'Committee' is a singular noun. When a group of committee members assemble one doesn't say - 'the committee are ready to proceed'. When a group of police assemble, one does say - 'the police are ready to proceed'.

Again and again:
The universe is a two-poles entity, an all-mass and an all-energy poles.

Singularity and the Big Bang MUST have happened with the smallest base universe particles, the gravitons, that MUST be both energy and mass, even if all of them are inert mass just one smallest fraction of a second at the pre-Bing Bang singularity. All mass formats evolve from gravitons that convert into energy i.e. escape their gravitons shatters-clusters, becoming mass formats in motion, i.e. energy. And they all end up again as mass in a repeat universal singularity.

Universe expansion and re-contraction proceed simultaneously.

Graviton is the elementary particle of the universe. The gravitons are compacted into the universal inert singularity mass only for the smallest fraction of a second, when all the gravitons of the universe are compacted together, inert, with zero distance between all of them. This state is feasible and mandated by their small size and by their hence weak force.

The Big Bang is the shattering of the short-lived singularity mass into fragments that later became galactic clusters. This is inflation. The shattering is the start of movement of the shatters i.e. the start of reconversion of mass into energy, mass in motion. This reconversion proceeds at a constant rate since the big bang, since the annealing-tempering of singularity and the start of resolution of gravitons. The release of gravitons from their shatters-clusters proceeds at constant rate due to their weak specific force due to their small size.

Gravity is propensity of energy reconversion to mass.
Inflation and expansion are per Newton.

A commonsensible conjecture is that the Universe Contraction is initiated following the Big-Bang event, as released moving gravitons (energy) deliver their thrust to other particles and are collected by and stored in black holes at very low energy levels steadily leading to the re-formation of the Universe Singularity, simultaneously with expansion, i.e. that universal expansion and contraction are going on simultaneously.

The conjectured implications is that the Universe is a product of A Single Universal Black Hole with an extremely brief singularity of ALL the gravitons of the universe, which is feasible and possible and mandated because gravitation is a very weak force due to the small size of the gravitons, the primal mass-energy particles of the universe.

Dov Henis (comments from 22nd century)http://universe-life.com/
PS:
Comment submitted 2012/12/07
A force dependent upon mass and the distance between objects. The English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) set out the classical theory of gravity in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). According to classical theory, gravitational force, always attractive between two objects, increases directly and proportionately with mass of the objects but is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the objects
According to general relativity, gravity results from the bending of fused space-time. According to modern quantum theory, gravity is postulated to be carried by a vector particle termed a graviton.
—————————————-
Per my assessment of present data, in plain spoken English:
Gravity is the propensity of energy reconversion to mass. Propensity of gravitons, the fundamental mass-energy particles, to assemble-group-cluster at lowest feasible energy level, at state of least feasible motion …
Everything in the universe derives from the duality mass-energy, from the ( circa 20 billion years ? ) universe cycle between the two poles all-mass-all energy.
And ALL human concepts-comprehensions are once one way and then are re-comprehended another way…..
DH

Money doesn't translate into prestige. Even though the Fundamental Physics Prize gives its recipient almost three times the monetary award of the Nobel Prize, it will be quite some time before the Fundamental Physics Prize reaches the high esteem in which the Nobel Prize was once held.

The Nobel committee likes to wait for a discovery to be verified and entrenched, while the Fundamental Physics Prize likes to rush things, it seems. And Albert Einstein had the same difficulty with the Nobel committee that Stephen Hawking is now experiencing. In 1921, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect, a relatively minor contribution to science relative to his accomplishments in Relativity. We must not forget that the four papers comprising Special Relativity were published in 1905 and that the General Theory of Relativity was completed in 1915. And in 1919, astronomical observations confirmed much of what Relativity had predicted. But in 1921, the Nobel committee would not give Einstein the Nobel Prize for his work on Relativity. Shame on the Nobel committee. Shame on the Swedish Academy.

Nobel laureates are honored to receive the Nobel Prize. But for someone like Albert Einstein, it is he who gives the Nobel Prize honor. The Nobel committee should be honored that he accepted their award. If they rejected Relativity, he should have rejected them in return.

But the Nobel Prize is not what it used to be. It has become politicized and because of that politicization it has lost much of its prestige. History will record that the Nobel Peace Prize is the culprit. The Peace Prize is what destroyed the power, the prestige, and the beauty of the Nobel Prize. They have given that Peace Prize to imbeciles with little accomplishment. And when you destroy one element of anything, you often destroy the whole thing. They did it to themselves. Yes, the Nobel committee has forever tarnished and contaminated what was once the most valued and honored of all prizes. And it was Obama that dealt it the final blow. It was he who completely rendered it worthless. Yes, it was that Negro.

It made sense to give it to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1964 for fighting on the front lines in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Fighting for the rights of the Negro. But Obama is a beneficiary of that movement. He played no part in that movement. He accomplished nothing worthy of the Peace Prize when it was awarded to him in 2009. He had accomplished nothing more than the fulfillment of his own personal career ambition.

In the first para did you use the phrase "the secretive committee held their horses" by design or inadvertance? "The secretive committee" sure sounds singular to me - "their" sure as s**t isn't.

And in the second para, you wrote - "... the committee of Nobel's upstart rival, the Fundamental Physics Prize. On December 11th it revealed ..." Now the committee is used in its (correct) singular form, to refer to the entity.

Was this a conscious example of non-parallel usage or an oversight on your part. (Don't fret - you're not under oath; only your intellectual honesty is on the line.)